"Scale Back" - April 29, 2022

[JJD]

I was busy this weekend so I just tried this puzzle for fun at lunch and got almost everything except that I took the Theme too literally and used the “back” letters of the subsequent grid entries (CENT ACHES etc), which anagrams to TETRADS, which are 4-note chords!!

[BrennerTJ]

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is CANTATA. Each of the starred answers has a synonym that can be made by putting a note of the scale before another grid answer (GUIDE/DOCENT, ARRIVES AT/REACHES, TRIVIAL/MINOR, BEGAT/FATHERED, COMFORT/ SOLACE, CONCEALED/LATENT, CROWN/TIARA). The first letters of those grid answers spell the contest answer.

We sound like a broken record (speaking of musical terms) but this one was brilliant, elegant, challenging, a true choral masterpiece. We had 875 entries, fewer than usual, with about 82% correct, higher than usual. (Evidently, stumped solvers just gave up instead of taking wild guesses.).

Incorrect submissions included SOLFEGE (21), ALLEGRO (6), ANDANTE (6), CADENCE (4) and many others.

Congrats to this week's winner: John Hayes of Davenport, Iowa!

[BarbaraK]

According to my calculations, if you submitted the correct answer for every WSJ meta since April 29, 2016, the odds that you won a mug just reached 40%.

If you prefer the micromug approach, you'd now have 508,354 µM - over half a virtual mug. Cheers!